The Pilgrims

FAIN: TR-50397-12

City Lore: NY Center for Urban Folk Culture (New York, NY 10003-9345)
Eric Burns (Project Director: January 2012 to present)

Production of a two-hour film and companion website exploring the political, economic, religious, and historical forces that led to the formation and migration of the Pilgrims and the first decade of their colony in New England.

"The Pilgrims," a two-hour documentary film directed by Ric Burns for national broadcast in Britain and America in 2014, explores the deep history, origins and critical first decade of the first permanent British colony in New England. Exploring the forces, circumstances and events that converged to propel the Pilgrims west across the Atlantic in the early 17th century--arguably one of the most resonant events of the last half millennium--the film will explore in detail a seminal if often misunderstood episode of American and world history--one universally familiar in broad outline, but almost entirely unfamiliar to a general audience in its rich and compelling historical actuality, and rarely presented in the broad global context required. Embedding the story of the Pilgrims in the deep social, political, cultural, economic and religious currents of their own world the film will bring to life and dramatize from within the real story of the men and women of the Mayflower.